


Collateral Damage

by helsinkibaby



Series: Inside the Tornado [7]
Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-26
Updated: 2011-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"War Crimes" post ep. Leo goes home after his meeting with Adamley. Seventh in the Inside the Tornado series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

It's late. Well, not late really. It's after eight at night, which is early to be thinking about leaving the office ordinarily. However, it's also Sunday, which means that almost everyone else has probably already gone home, that is if they came in today at all. I sent Margaret home a couple of hours ago, telling her, despite her protests, that I wasn't going to be here that much longer. And since then, I've just been sitting here, staring into space, thinking.

It's funny how one simple conversation, not even that, a few simple words, have the power to turn your world upside down and inside out. This morning, I had no inkling that the day would turn out like it did. I woke up, and there was no sense of impending doom. Quite the contrary in fact. The alarm went off, right on time as it always does, and it was smacked off quickly, but not by me. The language accompanying said smack would have made a stevedore blush, and I told her as much. Sometimes she'll give me a smart retort back, but this morning she just turned to me with one of those grins on her face that means I'm in even more trouble, pulling me towards her and proceeding to do other things that would make a stevedore blush.

Which is not the worst way of starting my day.

She didn't have to come in this morning, so she was able to go back to sleep after I left, and I promised her that I wouldn't be home late. I think she knew that I was reaching on that one, but she didn't call me on it, just turned around and pulled the covers up over her and went back to sleep. And I will admit that I couldn't resist turning when I got to the bedroom door, just taking another quick look at her. I do that sometimes, look at her when she's preoccupied with something else, or when she doesn't know I'm doing it. I've been doing it a long time, since before we began seeing each other, sometimes without even realising that that's what I was doing. It's long since been my way of getting through the day.

But even I didn't realise how much I was going to need that today.

When I heard about the church shooting, I knew it was going to be a bad day, all the more so because it happened in Texas. Because that meant that we were going to have to get the Vice President involved and whenever he and the President get together, fireworks are all but guaranteed. Then, hearing that the little girl had died … I can't explain why it hit me so hard. The only think I can think of is that it's always worse when it's children. Especially when it was supposed to be her birthday tomorrow.

I thought that that was as bad as it could get.

How wrong could I have been?

A meeting with Alan Adamley was nothing to worry about I told myself. We've known each other for years; we served together in Vietnam. He's seen me at my worst, literally. We were going to have a short meeting about the War Crimes Tribunal. I was going to deal with it myself, keep it off the President's desk.

It was supposed to be a simple meeting.

It wasn't supposed to turn my world upside down.

When he showed me that file… when he told me what was inside it, I couldn't believe it at first. And then his words began to sink in.

"From I.P., heading 273 for 10.5 miles. Your target is a north-south running bridge over river, one kilometre to the tree line running east-west."

"It was a civilian target. It was a dam. There were eleven civilian casualties."

How could he tell me that? Why would he tell me that?

Eleven people, dead. Innocent people. Men, women, children probably. Little children, just like that little girl that died today, going about their everyday business, not expecting what happened to them. Not expecting to die, certainly not so horribly, so violently, so senselessly.

So much blood on my hands.

I guess I've always known on some level, that there were probably civilian casualties based on the bombing runs that I did. There are always civilian casualties in war. There's even a handy name for that, collateral damage. A phrase that people use when they want to obfuscate reality. A phrase I've used all too often.

But this is different. This wasn't collateral damage; this wasn't an some accidental unavoidable by-product that could never have been foreseen. This was a pre-meditated, intentional order that I was following. An order to kill innocents in cold blood. And I did it. And ignorance is no excuse for what I did.

I could sit here all night, brooding about this, but I know that I have to go home sometime, so it might as well be now. I pick up the phone, but I don't call her. I know where she's going to be, I know that she's waiting for me. I also know that I can't possibly talk to her right now, not if I want to keep myself together.

Instead I call my guy, and there's not a flicker of anything on his face when he asks me where I want to go tonight and I tell him to take me to Ainsley's address. He's been most discreet these last few months, and I'm extremely grateful for that now. Because it's suddenly hit me that she can see with a glance how I'm feeling, if there's something on my mind. I'm not going to be able to hide this from her; besides, something that we've agreed on is that we don't have secrets between each other.

I just don't know how she's going to feel about me after this.

She's not going to understand. How can she? Vietnam isn't even a memory for her, it's a chapter in a history book. It's old newsreels on television, it's protest marches and a Tom Cruise film. The run that Alan was talking about today took place in 1968. I know without even counting back that she was barely even born then, and that fact rams home our age difference to me again.

And I wonder what the hell's she doing with me.

We were just getting things back on track after last week, after the first massive fight that we've ever had. We both screamed at each other, said things that we shouldn't have said, me especially. And there were tears and hurt feelings, but we were getting past them. And then this happened.

When we get to her place, I almost ask to be taken home without even getting out, but I know that that's the coward's way out. So I get out, and stand for a moment, watching as the car drives away. Then I trudge slowly up the steps, letting myself into the apartment.

"That you?" I hear her call from the living room, and I hear the television being muted slightly.

"You expecting someone else?" The words sound almost normal coming from my lips, which is odd considering the circumstances. I hang up my coat, putting my briefcase beside the coat-stand, making my way towards her voice. It strikes me again as I walk how much time I've spent at this place recently. Sometimes she comes to my place, but more often than not, it's here I come. I prefer this place to my own. My place is still very much an apartment that I happen to live in, the one that Mallory helped me pick out, helped me furnish after I moved out of the house. There are some personal items there, but not many. This, on the other hand, isn't just a place where she lives. It's a home. There are pictures everywhere, grandmother, parents, sister's family, college friends, the whole deal. She's furnished the place perfectly, and there are books everywhere, because she reads one and she can't bear to be parted from it. I teased her once that there are probably books here that were read to her when she was in her cradle, and she didn't dispute it. She couldn't, because she went to one shelf and pulled out the rattiest, tattiest set of Doctor Seuss books I've ever seen and asked me did I want to hear one of them.

When I get to the living room, she's curled up on the couch watching a film. Julia Roberts is currently maxing out Richard Gere's credit card, but she disappears from the screen when Ainsley hears me coming in. "Not as such no," she tells me, replying to my earlier question. "But you never know who might let himself in…"

"Well, it's just me," I tell her, leaning over the back of the couch to kiss her quickly. "How was your day?"

"I cleaned the apartment, I caught up on some reading, I called my father and my sister. Denied that I was seeing a Democrat." Her lips twist at that last statement, and something lurches in my stomach for a moment. I know that she's had to lie to her family, her sister most especially in the past about us, and I know how much she hates doing it. It's a necessary evil right now though, because there's no way that her sister would accept it.

And I wonder for a moment if she ever will, and if not, what that means for Ainsley and me.

"And," A grin lights up her face and she stands up, stretching. Her sweatshirt rides up slightly as she does, displaying her midriff and I can't keep my eyes from settling there. "I caught the second half of the football, and might I just say how much fun I will surely have collecting from Sam my winnings tomorrow morning?"

"You're in the pool?"

"Charlie asked me yesterday," she tells me grinning still, and I know how much that would have meant to her after her outburst last week about how she felt like a pariah in the West Wing. Which I still can't believe I didn't know about. "Should I gloat, or should I be magnanimous in my victory?" She's practically doing a victory shimmy around the room as we speak.

"What would Sam do?" I ask her, taking off my jacket, throwing it on one of the chairs.

"Good point." She considers for a second, chewing her thumbnail thoughtfully. "You're right. Gloating it is." I find myself smiling briefly at her reaction, and wish that I could be a fly on the wall when she sees Sam in the morning. Those two have had an odd friendship since they first met, when she kicked his ass on Capitol Beat. He was one of the ones that I was most worried about when she began working with us, but ironically, he ended up being one of her first defenders. And ever since then, he's been one of the people that she can consistently talk to, without worrying about how what she's saying might be interpreted. That's one of Sam's strengths - once you're his friend, you're his friend for life, no matter what others might say about it. He's been a good friend to her, and depending on which cog of the Rumour Mill you listen to, he's interested in being far more than a good friend to her. I even thought for a while there that there was something going on, or at least beginning between them. And the thought strikes me, and not for the first time either, that she might have been better off with him. He's closer to her in age, he's never been married, he doesn’t have a daughter almost the same age as her. He's not her boss. He's not the one who hired her. He's not a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. He's never committed a war crime.

"Leo?"

Her voice draws me back to reality and her hand is on my arm, and from the tone of her voice, it's not the first time that she's said my name. I shake my head, trying to clear the thoughts. "Yeah?"

Her head is tilted as she looks up at me, her eyes narrowed. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I'm fine."

But I'm not, and she knows it. It shows in the fact that she frowns even more, that her hand tightens on my arm. "Is this about the little girl?"

The image of the broken body of a little Vietnamese girl lying in the undergrowth flashes through my mind and I shake my head again. "No," I tell her. "It's not that."

God, I need a drink right now.

"Then what is it?" I look down, at the floor, up and across at the bookcase, anywhere but at her, because I can't look into that face, not feeling like I'm feeling, not knowing what I know. "Leo, you can tell me."

"I'm not sure I can."

I’m still not looking at her, and she takes matters into her own hands, literally. She puts one hand on either side of my face and forces me to look at her. "You said that to me when you told me about the President having MS," she reminds me. "And it wasn't true then either." That was the night that I first kissed her, after wanting to for so long. It was one of the worst days of my life, but that night made it all seem not quite so bad. "Leo… there is nothing you can say that would make a difference to us."

My breath catches in my throat at her choice of words because they're the exact ones that I used to her last week, right before she told me about Cliff and Donna. They were the words that brought about our first major fight.

That doesn't sound like a good omen to me.

But I'm looking into her eyes, and I find myself wanting to tell someone about what I've discovered. Wanting to tell her. I've told her everything of consequence to me since we've been together, since before then. I can't not tell her now, no matter how she might take it.

So I nod, and I sit down beside her on the couch and I take a deep breath and tell her the whole story. About the radio speech and why Alan came to the office today. About his concerns and my counter-arguments. And finally I tell her about the file that he picked up, about the orders that I followed.

"It was a civilian target," I tell her. She's been silent up to now, her hand on mine, but it squeezes tightly when she hears those words and she can't stop the gasp that escapes her lips. "They told me that it was military… but it was a dam. There were eleven civilian casualties."

"Oh my God, Leo…" Her voice is a whisper, her eyes wide. She hesitates for an instant, and I get the feeling she's waiting for me to say something else. When it becomes clear to her that I'm waiting for her to say something, anything, else, she lets go of my hands and wraps her arms around my neck, holding me to her tightly.

And God help me, I put my arms around her and bury my head in her hair and I hold on as tightly as I can.

When she loosens her grip, I do the same, and she takes my hands in hers again, and her eyes are locked with mine. "You can't blame yourself," she tells me firmly.

"I was the one flying the plane Ainsley, I was the one who executed the orders…" Even as I speak, I'm back in the cockpit again, the instruments in front of me, the jungle below me, so green, so beautiful, yet so deadly. Far below me, men lurked there who wanted to kill me, my buddies, any American soldier he came across. It was us or them wasn't it? Wasn't it?

Her voice, still firm, but more urgent now, pulls me back to reality. "Orders Leo. You followed orders. You didn't give them."

"Terrible things can be done in the name of following orders," I remind her, but she still shakes her head.

"You didn't know Leo. You were doing your job, the best way you could. You can't beat yourself up over it now."

"Innocent people are dead because of me Ainsley." There's no anger in my voice any more; there hasn't been for quite a while now. Just tiredness.

Her voice is just as quiet. "And if it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else."

"That doesn't make it right."

"I know that. But it does mean that you can't be held responsible for it."

"I can. I committed a war crime Ainsley. I killed people, innocent people. What kind of man am I?"

"You're the same man you were when you left my bed this morning," she tells me, and tears come into her eyes suddenly, and her hands reach up to my face, holding it in place as she stares at me. "You're the same man who got Jed Bartlet elected President, you're the same man for who every single person working in the West Wing would walk through fire. You're the same man who welcomed a conservative Republican from North Carolina into the White House that she deplored, and who not only welcomed her, but befriended her." I can see the effort it's costing her to keep those tears back, but she keeps on going. "Do you remember the first night you kissed me?"

I nod my head, her hands never moving from my cheeks. "Yeah," I manage, and I'm shocked by how choked my voice is. "I remember."

"Remember, the lyric I quoted you? About you being the Charlie Brown of missile defence? 'You're a good man Charlie Brown, You're the kind of reminder we need, You have humility, nobility and a sense of honour, That is very rare indeed.' That's still who you are Leo. You haven't changed."

"I feel like I have…"

She shakes her head and one tear slips down her cheek. It leaves a silvery path in its wake and I can't take my eyes away from it. "You're a good man Leo McGarry," she whispers. "You wouldn't be feeling this way if you weren't." She leans forward then, meeting my lips with her own, and the kiss is gentle, tentative, just like our first kiss, on this very couch in fact.

But unlike our first kiss, this doesn't progress as far as fast. Instead, she pulls away from me, and wraps her arm around my shoulder. I let her pull my head down so that it rests on her shoulder, and I put my arms around her torso. One of her hands reaches up and strokes the top of my head, the other is running up and down my arm, and I wonder how she knew exactly what I needed right now. I just needed this, to be with her, to sit quietly and be held, to know that what I'd told her didn't make a difference to her. To know that it didn't affect how she felt about me.

I can feel the warmth of her body through her sweatshirt, can smell the shampoo that she used to wash her hair earlier on. Her breath is soft on the top of my head, and her hands keep up their movement. And I feel safe at last, better than I have all day.

My eyes drift shut of their own accord.

When they open again, I'm not sure how much time has passed. But I wake up with a gasp, the whirr of rotors and the sound of gunfire still ringing in my ears, the smell of blood and sweat and terror still assaulting my nostrils. I'm breathing heavily as if I've been running for miles, and I almost expect to find myself back there, thirty years in my past.

Then there's a hand on my arm, and two wide eyes are looking at me, and her mouth is opening and closing and forming words that I can only half recognise. When they finally make sense to me, I realise that she's saying my name, that she's asking me if I'm all right. I nod at her, and she grins shakily, standing and kissing the top of my head. I want to turn around, to see where she's going, but I can't seem to make my body move right now.

Then a glass of water materialises in front of me. "Drink this," she commands, and I take it from her. I don't miss the tremor in my hand when I do, and from the tightening of her lips, nor does she.

When all the water is gone, she takes the glass from me, placing it on the coffee table. "Bad dream?" She sits down beside me, not touching me.

I nod, although I can't remember it, just the fleeting impressions. "Yeah."

"Vietnam?"

"Yeah?"

She nods again. "You want to talk about it?"

I take in a shaky breath, let it out slowly. Do it all over again. "I don't remember much," I tell her honestly. Not that there's anything new in that. Some guys can remember every facet of a nightmare, as if every frame has been replayed in super slo-mo. Not me though. Never me. "Just the sounds, the smells. The fear."

"It was just a dream," she tells me softly, and that's when she touches me, her hand moving in slow circles on my back.

"Yeah." I turn my head to her, and her other palm comes up once again to rest on my cheek. I cover it with my own, moving it over to my lips, placing a kiss there before taking it down, holding it properly in my own. "Let's go to bed."

"Are you going to be ok?"

I nod, because I'm sure I will be. I only ever had one nightmare a night back in the day. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that my coping mechanism consisted of going downstairs and getting myself good and liquored up, until oblivion claimed me again. That thought awakens a powerful hunger in me, one that I push away quickly. I'm not that messed up, not yet.

So instead of gripping the neck of a bottle, I grip her hand, and we walk into the bedroom. Once there, she knows again what I need and she slips into my old Bartlet for America T-shirt while I rummage around in the drawer for the T-shirt that I occasionally wear when I'm here. Then we curl up in bed together, me lying on my back, her in my arms.

It takes me a long time to fall asleep.

It takes her just as long.

I lie there, and I stare up at the ceiling and I try not to think about the tension in her body right now. I try not to remember the worry in her eyes when she handed me the glass of water. I try not to think about the tear that fell down her cheek when she was talking to me earlier.

I don't succeed.

That's one tear that she's already spilled on my account. There were more during our fight last week, although the little voice inside me that sounds like her reminds me that those weren't blamed wholly on me. The little voice that sounds like me shouts over that though, reminding me who started the whole conversation.

How many more tears is she going to cry because of me? Because of the working late, because of the not seeing her, because of the missed dinners and phone calls? When this comes out, when her father and her sister and her friends attack her for lying to them, for dating me, an old alcoholic Democrat who couldn't be worse for her?

If I care about her as much I think I do, as much I as I think that I could, I should walk away from her right now. I should have done that a long time ago.

And I realise anew that I couldn't have done that then, any more than I can do it now. Because she's the only thing that's holding me together right now. If I didn't have her to talk to, to hold, to hold me, I don't know what I'd do.

I need her in my life.

God help me, I need her in my life and I can't give her up.

Not even to spare her being collateral damage.


End file.
